Watercooler Stories

China to cut tar in cigarettes

BEIJING, June 29 (UPI) -- China, the world's largest producer and consumer of cigarettes, is going to lower the amount of tar in all cigarettes sold in the nation to not more than 15 milligrams.

"Those cigarettes that fail to meet the standards will be sealed up and destroyed," said the state Tobacco Monopoly Administration, Tuesday.

The deadline for the lower tar cigarettes is Thursday, but the agency said tobacco producers could still sell their cigarettes with a higher tar content if the cigarettes were manufactured before July 1.

China has approximately 300 million tobacco smokers and each year nearly 1 million Chinese die of diseases related to tobacco smoking. That exceeds the combined death tolls from tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, confinement diseases, traffic accidents and suicide, reported Xinhua, China's main government-run news agency.

Toyota tops list as most reliable car

DETROIT, June 29 (UPI) -- A survey Tuesday said Japanese auto maker Toyota was the highest-ranked manufacturer for dependability in the United States for the 10th consecutive year.

The J.D. Power and Associates poll showed Toyota Motor's Lexus brand was voted the most dependable by 18,00 owners of cars that are three years old, the research group reported. J.D. Power said 52 percent of new car buyers view long-term quality as one of the most important factors in determining which car to buy.

In second place was another Japanese manufacturer, Honda, while Porsche came in third place, followed by General Motors and BMW.

Toyota and Honda "are head and shoulders above everybody else and the factor there is that they were the first in the industry to recognize building vehicles that last is really the most important thing," said J.D. Power's executive director of customer satisfaction research, Joe Ivers.

Taiwan: Chinese lying to work in sex trade

TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 29 (UPI) -- Taiwan is finding hundreds of Chinese women seeking to move to the island republic supposedly for marriage, just want to be sex workers.

To reduce the flow of sex workers from the mainland, the immigration bureau of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said it was conducting three interviews for every "couple," the Taipei Times reported Tuesday.

First, the bureau talks to the Taiwanese person to whom the Chinese immigrant is supposed to get married. Second, the immigrant is interviewed upon her arrival in the country. Third, if questions remain about the marriage, the bureau interviews the two parties together within one month of the immigrant's arrival.

The council said of 6,174 people interviewed from December 2003 through May 2004, 592 were found to be lying about their alleged marriage plans.

Texas death row inmate gets reprieve

HUNTSVILLE, Texas, June 29 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday granted a reprieve to a Texas death row inmate about four hours before he was to receive a lethal injection.

Mauro Barraza, 32, smiled when he was informed about the court action, prison spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said.

"Man, that's good news," he said, before being returned to the death row.

It was the second execution date for Barraza, who was 17 when he murdered Vilore Nelson in 1989 at Haltom City. Barraza has said he was high on cocaine when he raped and killed the 73-year-old woman Scott Schutte, Barraza's lawyer, had asked the high court to delay his client's execution until it rules on the constitutionality of executing people for crimes committed when they were under the age of 18. They are scheduled to hear the case this fall.

Barraza would have been the ninth murderer executed this year in Texas.